The ability to visually distinguish different objects through imaging is critical for many applications. Oftentimes, the objects to be discerned are different in nature but may appear similar to the naked eye or under a conventional imaging process. For example, in medical imaging and surgical imaging, it is of paramount importance that the surgeon can distinguish between different anatomical structures.
In the conventional process of imaging, the intensity of a pixel in an image sensor is found by physically integrating over the spectral and angular dimensions of the incident spectral illumination. However, since the pixel intensity is found by integrating over the spectral dimensions of the incident light, the conventional imaging process may fail to detect individual spectral components in the incident light that might be able to provide scene-specific or scene-general contrast for distinguishing the objects.